Head Coach Mark Richt
Opening Statement…
“We are playing Georgia Tech this week, and we’re excited
about that. Of course we all found out that they are the winners of the ACC
Coastal Division, and they’ll represent the Coastal Division in the ACC
Championship Game. I know they are excited about that.”
“It’s a very challenging week of preparation for us. It will be a highly emotional game for
a lot of reasons. Number one, it’s our in-state rival. Number two, it’s the
last home game for our seniors, a big day for our boys. On that note, it we can
get the Bulldog nation out there a little bit earlier, our Dawg Walk is going
to be a little earlier at 10:15. That’s about 15 minutes earlier than we
normally have it because of some of the senior festivities. I’m hoping that
everybody can be in the stands in time to honor those guys. I think it’s going
to be at 11:46. We’re hoping to send our seniors off with a great moment there
before the game and hopefully they’ll play great during the game. It’s an early
morning for everybody, and I’m hoping the Bulldog nation shows up early and
supports us like always. Hopefully we can be in the stands by the time the
seniors get introduced.”
On Georgia’s senior
class…
“We have won a lot of games, and I’m very impressed with
this senior bunch. They really wanted to take some ownership of this team. Once
they all decided to stick around, just the fact that everybody on defense
especially checked out the NFL and where they might be drafted, once they all
decided to stay I think it created energy immediately for those guys and for
the team and the coaching staff too. I’m sure the Bulldog nation was fired up
when they heard most everybody was coming back other than Orson (Charles).
Because they decided to stay, they wanted it to be a special season. They
didn’t just want it to be another year where we came up short, so I saw a sense
of urgency in the offseason. I saw a very organized summer. (Aaron Murray)
rallied a bunch of the leaders and asked them to divide the team into subgroups
and had a high accountability with those groups to work out and in running,
lifting, throwing and all the things you do in the summer. They’ve done a
really good job. We didn’t start out playing as great as we would hope to,
especially on the defensive side of the ball, but we got that thing turned
around with Shawn’s (Williams) leadership. I think that was the catalyst for
our defense to pick it up, and we’ve been playing pretty well ever since.
There’s been a lot of player-driven stuff that we always talked about. I saw a
lot more of it than we talked about it this year.”
On the possibility of
Georgia’s juniors leaving for the NFL…
“I don’t know. It’s really not the appropriate time to talk
about that, but it won’t be long before everybody will be talking about it. I
think everybody is just trying to focus hard on what is happening this week.”
On Christian Robinson…
“I think he’s had a pretty good season. When (Alec Ogletree)
was out for a while, the roles were different for Amarlo (Herrera) and
(Michael) Gilliard and Christian (Robinson), and when (Ogletree) came back it
changed the dynamic of that linebacker group. I think he’s led all the way
through. He’s had a tremendously positive attitude. When he’s getting his opportunities
to play, he’s played well. He’s been playing more nickel stuff. Like you said
this last game he was a starter and played a lot and played well. He made a
bunch of tackles. He’s just very good at identifying things and trying to
communicate it with his teammates. He’s always there with a smile on his face
and ready to go to work. He’s just a great guy.”
“Is he overachieving? I think the fact that he’s very
intelligent and very diligent, it helps him function out there, there is no
doubt about it, but he’s a good athlete. He’s a good football player. A lot of
people wanted him out of high school just like we did. He’s a good athlete.”
On how Georgia will
handle the triple option against Georgia Tech…
“I don’t know. We’ll find out how well we handle it against
Georgia Tech. They are averaging 47 points over the last three or four games.
They are just so explosive that I just don’t how we are going to handle it. We
are going to have to find out.”
On Georgia Tech
head coach Paul Johnson’s ability to coach the triple-option offense…
“There aren’t a lot of people doing it, but he knows it
so well that obviously he doesn’t need a call sheet. It’s in his brain, and he’s
seen just about everything under the sun, as far as people trying to defend it.
When he sees something, he knows where to go next, and that’s the beauty of the
system that they have. You know what to do to counteract what a defense is
trying to do to stop something or slow it down. I don’t know if that many
people have as good a grasp on their offensive system. There’s a lot of coaches
that if the defense brings a little bit of a different scheme to a game, it
might take until halftime to start making adjustments and it might take until
the next day Sunday to watch what happened and figure out what went wrong.
Whereas, I think within a matter of plays, he’s making adjustments. He might
see one play and one thing they’re doing and he’ll know immediately what he’s
going to go to then. He doesn’t have to go back and review what he thinks he ought
to go to next.”
On the play of
Branden Smith this season…
“Branden’s been great. He’s one of those seniors that you
just love and appreciate. He has been effective for us offensively, defensively
and with some special teams stuff. I see tremendous improvement in him in two
areas. One is his intensity on a daily basis in practice. I think he’s become much more physical
in his defending of the pass and his defending of the run. Sometimes a guy is a
field corner because you don’t want him to be at the point of attack a lot in
the run game. You don’t want him to be the guy that has to support the run a
lot, but he’s become a very physical guy in that way, and he plays the screens
much better. He plays the plays they get outside the field and the run game out
there. He’s just tenacious as a defender. I’m just seeing big improvements over
his career, and he’s become a really fine player.”
On the importance
of the Georgia Tech rivalry…
“We always talk about it. There’s enough to talk about in
this rivalry. Coach T (Joe Tereshinski) is passionate about this game, so he
wants to put his two cents in, which is great. I want them to hear it. Because
we don’t have any time constraints this week, we have a little bit more time to
talk about those things on a daily basis, so we’re not as rushed for time with
the fact that there’s no class and there’s no restriction on the 20-hour rule.”
On the importance
of the continuity of the coaching staff this year…
“I think it’s great to have coaching continuity when you
have the right coaches, and I think we do. I’m very impressed with our coaches.
They’re highly competent. They’re highly competitive. They just know what
they’re doing. They’re good motivators, and they’re good evaluators of talent
and also of what needs to be done and how it needs to get done. I love what
we’re doing with the strength staff. I love the support staff and all the
people that support us in that area. It’s the most complete staff, as far as
just everybody understanding their job and everybody doing it. That helps with
the continuity. We have what we call our hideaway before every year, and when
you have new coaches or new staff, there’s a learning curve there. Sometimes
you have to take a lot more time to explain the Georgia way, and this year we
got it done in the shortest amount of time since I’ve probably been around here
because everybody pretty much knows what to do. They’re doing a good job of
it.”
On maintaining
focus on a week-to-week basis without looking ahead…
“We’re just focusing on today really, and then we’ll
focus on tomorrow. It’s one day at a time.”
On people asking
him about the BCS…
“The staff’s not asking me. I get here at eight and leave
about midnight, so there’s not many people I talk to outside the building. So,
we really haven’t talked about it.”
On keeping players
focused as postseason draws near…
“We meet every day and we talk just like we do every
week. We talk about who we’re playing next, what kind of challenges they bring,
and what we have to do on a daily basis to get ready for it. That’s really all
we do.”
On the energy level
that will be present against Georgia Tech…
“Energy level is huge, obviously. If you have energy and
no discipline, or if you have energy and no plan, it’s not going to be good. So
you want to have good fundamentals and a good plan and then add energy to it.
That’s kind of how it goes. I don’t know why sometimes there’s more energy in
one given day. Sometimes I think momentum plays a bigger part than a lot of
people think, on some days. There are some days people get momentum and you
just can’t get it going for some reason. Sometimes people grab momentum, a big
play happens, and then all of a sudden you start feeling good and it creates a
little doubt for them. You’d like to think every single game that you’re
bulletproof, but you’re not. How many teams are undefeated right now? Just
two.”
On historically
playing well against Georgia Tech…
“I think the guys understand how important this game is,
and they want to win it. They want to win all of them, but I think this game
takes on a little bit more special meaning for them.”
On the importance
of this game for in-state recruiting purposes…
“I think it’s very important. The more you win overall,
the better it is for your recruiting. I don’t think there’s any doubt about
that. I don’t think any one game makes a huge difference to the masses. There
may be a kid or two that might decide on one or the other because of the result
of a game, but that probably doesn’t happen very often. What I do think is that
a lot of times when, let’s say, a kid is interested in both schools and then
they play each other, I think what happens a lot of times is that their heart kind
of tells them which team they like the best. They’re watching the game and
they’ll find themselves wanting this team to win over the other team, so I
think at times it can define for a kid where his heart is, regardless of who wins
the game. He may be happy his team won or sad his team lost, but he might know
who his team is when it’s over. He may not have known that going in. All the
years that I’ve coached, when I was at Florida State, it was Florida and
Florida State. It was a huge game, and there were a lot of guys on the bubble.
You could see in some of their eyes after the game if they were happy or sad.
If we won the game, you’d see some guys happy and then you’d see some guys that
didn’t look too happy, and you’re thinking that guy’s going to Florida. So, I
think there’s some of that that happens in these types of games.”
On offensive line
coach Will Friend’s impact this season…
“Coach Friend has really been a blessing. He came in and
first of all works very well with Coach Bobo and the rest of the offensive
staff. He understands team when it comes to the staff and the players. He’s
just a very good technician, and he knows what he’s talking about. He’s a good
communicator. He’s good at figuring out these guys and what works with them and
what doesn’t work with them, as far as motivation. Again, what we looked like
in the spring compared to what we look like now, it’s night and day. He’s done
a great job. It helps them – the veteran quarterback and some backs and
the receivers that can make plays. All of that helps, but if you can’t give the
quarterback time and the backs a little room to run, it’s not going to be a
good year.”
Quarterback Aaron
Murray
On the Georgia Tech
game…
“I don’t know how you could overlook Georgia Tech. It’s a
heated rivalry, and there will be trash talking on the field. It’s fun. It
means so much to everyone on both sides, you can’t look past it. I’m excited
– I woke up Sunday morning ready to go for this week.”
On the offense…
“I feel great about it. Our receivers have stepped up after
two major losses [to Michael Bennett and Marlon Brown]. We’ve had guys continue
to step in and fill that void. Chris Conley has been awesome, the tight ends
have been awesome, Justin Scott-Wesley had his first
touchdown last week. We’ve got guys stepping up and making plays. It’s a credit
to how hard everyone has worked to get prepared to play.”
On being prepared for
Georgia Tech…
“I like the game plan we have going in. Coach [Mike] Bobo
has it ready for us already, which is pretty fast. It gives us time to watch
film, also having no school this week with Thanksgiving, so we can dissect
their defense and figure out what will work and what I feel comfortable with. I
feel good. I’ll be ready to go.”
Tight End Arthur Lynch
On Georgia Tech…
“No matter what the records are, or what’s happening,
nothing changes the fact that if we lose them it’s a living hell for the next
365 days. It’s what fuels me and gets me motivated. If you’re not motivated for
this game, you probably shouldn’t have come to Georgia. You always have to beat
Tech.”
On not looking ahead…
“Eight weeks ago before our big SEC stretch, Coach [Kirk] Olivadotti came to us and said that if we want to do these
things, win the SEC East, win the conference, everything else, we need to
buckle down and take it one game at a time. After South Carolina, especially,
we had to take a step back and realize that we can’t control our future. This
is a one-game season, and we’re two days into it. We haven’t looked ahead right
now. We haven’t all season.”
Linebacker Amarlo Herrera
On the Georgia vs. Georgia Tech rivalry…
“Being from
Atlanta this is a huge rivalry for me. Even though it might be predominantly a
Georgia fan base, it’s still split pretty evenly because Tech is right there in
Atlanta. With me being from Atlanta, I still here about it when I go home. It’s
pretty crazy. I’ve been a Bulldog my whole life, so this game means a lot to
me.”
On the importance of this game…
“You can never
overlook any game on your schedule, especially these guys. Like I said before,
they’re going to play their hearts out no matter what.”
On playing against the triple option
offense for the second week in a row…
“It helps us a
big amount going against this offense for the second week in a row, because you
get a feel of how the cut blocks will be coming against you in a live game. It
gives you an extra week of practice as well as game time experience on how to
defend against those cut blocks.”
Defensive End Garrison Smith
On the Georgia vs. Georgia Tech rivalry…
“I wouldn’t say
this game is bigger than the Florida rivalry, but I’d say it’s about the same.
I try and treat every game about the same because it’s all a matter of winning
or losing. I don’t want to lose against anybody; I hate losing more than I like
winning. A loss against Tech might hurt more than some other losses but as long
we go out there and do the best we can, then win or loss all that matters is
that you gave your all.”
On the BCS implications of Saturday’s
game…
“Everyone is
focused on the game at hand. We can’t look too far ahead of anybody; we have to
take it one game at a time. In order to have the best record, like we want to
do, we have to take it one game at a time and focus on the task at hand and
just do the best that we can.”
On playing against the triple option
offense for the second week in a row…
“I wouldn’t say
that we’re getting the hang of defending this offense; I would just say that
our guys are trying really hard. You can never get the hang of this offense
because it’s so good and so tricky. All you can do is go out and execute your
assignments, which is what everybody is doing. Georgia Tech has some great
coaches with Paul Johnson who has coached their team really well, and they all
execute very well. It’s going to be a challenge trying to stop them.”